I read today about Konstantin Chernenko, the man who led the Soviet Union in 1984 and 1985, dying in office, an expiration that gave way to Gorbachev, who, in my opinion, had more to do with ending the Cold War than did Ronald Reagan.  The Cold War's freeze required someone to open things up after decades of mistrust and pointing nuclear missiles.  Reagan had old-fashioned ideas about the East-West divide.  His method when president was to adrenalize America's defense programs, making so many nuclear weapons the Soviet Union couldn't keep up.  U.S. foreign policy on this issue ignored the fear in the American citizenry caused by contemplation of the bleakest possible outcome to such irresponsible spending and chicken-playing with the Soviet leadership.
     In 1983 a made for TV movie aired, called The Day After.  Fresh from directing the exciting and popular Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Nicholas Meyer made this grim downer that was hyped for weeks before airing.  The propaganda preceding the film was so effective that millions of Americans tuned in, expecting some more or less accurate depiction of what was likely on the way: nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States. 
     It's telling in my own case, having watched The Day After in 1983 and having felt, like many Americans, trepidation before doing so, that all I can remember about the film is Jason Robards watching the imaginary conflict beginning in a news report from divided Berlin.  The spark in Berlin spreads worldwide, and I assume human civilization steps down to the rat-eating level.  This dreary, horrible film had the reverse-polarizing effect of causing me to no longer worry about nuclear war.  Since then I've paid far more attention to the damage caused by the use of conventional weapons. 
     In 1983, Yuri Andropov, former KGB head, and Reagan sat on their thrones surveying the world landscape manipulated by the two superpowers.  Proxy wars were fought, the two superpowers acting as fight managers, reds versus red, white, and blues.  Nicaragua's Sandinistas were Marxists, therefore Reagan supported and illegally armed their opponents, the Contras.  The government of the Caribbean island of Grenada turned Marxist, so Reagan sent an invasion force--Operation Urgent Fury--to "liberate" some American medical students, banging away at a virtually defenseless country and awarding an absurdly large number of medals to U.S. military participants .  This ridiculous "war" against Grenada followed, by just two days, the bombing in Beirut of U.S. Marine barracks.  241 Marines died and Reagan, apparently, felt it necessary to balance accounts, so he expressed his anger against people who had nothing to do with the Mideast crisis. 
     After Andropov's death, the Soviet government ignored the late leader's choice of successor, Gorbachev, and picked Konstantin Chernenko, an old man in ill health, suffering from emphysema and other long-term ailments.  A heavy smoker most of his life--he started when he was nine--Chernenko was gravely ill when he assumed top position.  He'd been a high-ranking government official since the early 1960s, Brezhnev's Chief of Staff, a Politburo member, and long-term propagandist as well as communications director, in charge of spying on his fellows in government, and directing access from lower to higher levels, making him in that regard a Martin Bormann type.  One of his main activities was signing documents.  I imagine this man, described at the time of his brief leadership of America's archenemy, as "zombie-like," sitting at his desk in a smoky office writing his name with one hand and moving paper with the other.  Day after day, month after month.  A processor. 
     Finally, in his last years, he couldn't even write his name, so a machine affixed his signature to the endless document stream, just as Chernenko had used a machine to affix Andropov's signature when he could no longer function at his job. 
     Still, Chernenko lived.  His wife, whom he married during World War Two, had the emergency "red line" by her side of the bed so her husband needn't move if it rang.  This is the caliber of bogeyman we Americans were supposed to fear when we dutifully watched The Day After.
     In February 1985, Chernenko was dragged from bed by a government official to go vote for himself.  He won, but dropped dead a month later.  When Reagan was awakened with that news, he said, "How am I supposed to get anywhere with these Russian leaders if they keep dying on me?"  In his diplomatically gauche way he had a point: in just a few years three Soviet leaders died.  At that point, someone with the vitality and vision of Gorbachev was hard to imagine. 
     Chernenko isn't thought about much anymore, or so I assume.  Even Gorbachev's reputation in the United States, where Reagan is regarded much like a saint, has become fuzzy in even fairly young memories giving way to the encroaching oblivion of the constant new.  Chernenko, a gray man of the Soviet Union's history of many faceless power brokers, had a series of bureaucratic jobs that led him, without any effort on his part, to the driver's seat for one year.  He was probably picked to succeed Andropov because he was safe, a Party man since the 1930s, a loyal servant to the state.  Signing his name all those unnumbered times gave him some power coming from established authority, even if it was authority on a stratum distant from real power, which came to him at last when he was too decrepit to use it. 

                                                                            Vic Neptune